STRATEGIC PEACEBUILDING FOR A SUSTAINABLE PEACE
Welcome to our collaborative class website for Creating Global Peace- Spring 2018-- at Miami University. Peace studies focuses on learning about peace as a process that promotes positive relations among peoples of the world. Peace is studied as a dynamic human condition in which neither the overt violence of war/armed conflict nor the covert violence of unjust systems is used against people and places. Peace is the absence of war, but true peace or “positive peace” depends on the existence of political, social, economic, and environmental justice, a respect for all human rights and respectful communication, the maintenance of nonviolence, and on the just resolution of tensions.
Guided by The Little Book of Strategic Peacebuilding, our class focused on learning about and gaining important peacebuilding values and skills. We considered how strategic peacebuilding can guide problem analysis and the search for positive change. Collaboratively, the class selected the framework of sustainability to organize this site: “strategic peacebuilding, … building a sustainable just peace- a peace with justice” (p. 6 from The Little Book). Sustainability by practice and outcome focuses on how societies live today with a vision toward the future, and by structure needs to consider the sustainable use of the Earth's environmental resources (our only home), economic practices that promote equity and sustained livelihoods, and social conditions that nurture secure and happy communities. We recognize the potential contributions of the UN Sustainable Development Goals toward strategic peacebuilding- from the global to the local.
